


Kamikaze

by jazzetry



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: (as in random nameless characters that sometimes interacts with the main people), (it's implied though), Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Bad Parenting, Character Study, Child Neglect, He's Just A Good Friend, Im Changkyun | I.M-centric, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Missing Persons, Photographer Yoo Kihyun, Running Away, Strangers to Lovers, Swearing, Teenage Rebellion, but it’s really just a kid running away from home, changkyun is vaguely emo, except minhyuk, flawed character, is that a spoiler?, kihyun is a mom, kihyun just wants to have a good time, like too much swearing, make with it what you will, minhyuk is honestly not very important to the plot though, minhyuk isn't dying i just forgot to tag the minor character death thing, the summary makes this seem like a fantasy adventure, they're all very edgy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22013170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzetry/pseuds/jazzetry
Summary: A distant dream sends Changkyun on a search for home all while learning to forget his hatred.“Stepping out of bodyNo matter how you call itThis is suicidal honeyNothing you can do about itLet me take the check with the reckless abandon on itJust call me kamikaze”
Relationships: Im Changkyun | I.M/Yoo Kihyun, Lee Minhyuk & Yoo Kihyun
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	Kamikaze

People are either inherently good or bad. Changkyun’s father is awful. His mother is even worse. But his brother? Not one person could exceed him. He doesn’t even want to question his own morality.

All his life, he’s fallen in the shadow of his brother, doomed to live in it for eternity. But he couldn’t hate his brother. Not even a thousand sharp, ear-piercing shrieks screaming at him to, ‘ _ be more like his brother _ ,’ can dull his admiration. 

He’s old now. Well, in the context of his school right now. Being born in the beginning of the year, Changkyun’s older than a good majority of his peers, and to him, that age gap shows. He’d sneer at the  _ freshies  _ running through the halls as though they were kindergarteners while he strolls, dignified as he makes his way to his memorized classroom. His classmates, those that are in the same grade as he, are monkeys when he walks into the room, paying no mind to the obnoxious douchebags being just as obnoxiously loud. 

He’s listening to loud screamo music because even the cacophony of vague fuzz guitars and stumbling bass lines surrounding the sound of a middle-aged man ripping his vocal chords out to convey some semblance of emotion all while being the shallowest self-pitying piece ever than listen to the kids in his class asking if his dyed hair (it’s a shade of amber he hasn’t been keeping up since the day he bleached it forever ago, and one he doesn’t like, but is keeping for the sake of the angry looks on the superiors’ faces when he strolls into the school, twirling the keys to his beat-up car and chewing gum as though he owns the place) is his natural hair color or not despite his dark roots having appeared months ago. 

So yes, Changkyun doesn’t fit in with his class that, as far as he checked, was allegedly the  _ top math class _ for his grade. And he would rather do anything than have to deal with them for a second longer. 

~~

It’s incredibly petty, but Changkyun’s leaving home. In truth, he’s been prepared for a while, his bags have been packed for a while with all his necessities. 

By his bags, he means his singular backpack that’s been disintegrating in the deepest corner of his closet where all demons and such hide away for the perfect moment to strike for the past few years because his parents refuse to give him a new one under the pretense that it’s still perfectly fine. And by his necessities, he means the five hundred bucks he asked his parents if he could take when they were attending to anything other than him, and a few changes of underwear (because he’s not a cretin who reeks of body odor masked by heaping quantities of cheap cologne), his wallet with his fake I.D. he forced the friend of his ‘friend’ to gift to him forever ago, some changes of clothes, and a charger along with the portable charger he’s snagged off his father when he was out of the house.

He’s got all his stuff prepared, so all he has to do is go. Escape to a place so far away, he’d think he reached elysium rather than the rundown remnants of a once booming suburban area. 

To think he’s prepared for so long, and he doesn’t even know where to go. But it’s one a.m. in the morning, and he’s just escaped out his bedroom window. His car’s parked out in the street, so when he gets a ticket for having his car in the streets in the middle of the night, he can give his parents a big middle finger even after he’s gone. 

Rather than contemplating ways to further inconvenience his parents even after his absence, he starts his car, and it chugs into motion in a way only old hand-me-downs work. His brother probably got a shiny new car when he first got his license, but Changkyun is stuck with the ten year-old car instead of a new one. 

His first goal, get out of the neighborhood. Then out the city. Then out the state. Then, wherever the wind takes him, he supposes. 

~~

Changkyun’s driving against the sunrise, speeding down the interstate from east to west, waiting to see which comes first. The rising of the sun over the horizon, or himself crashing into a ditch. 

Regardless, all that matters is that he isn’t anywhere near his school, and he isn’t anywhere near his house. 

So, as he pulls off the expressway and onto a bumpy road, and he’s touched down in whichever city he’s in, he makes drives straight until he sees some sign of life other than the semi driving on the other side of him, creating a tight fit for the both of them. If the town’s big enough, he could probably find a roadside motel. 

He thinks to himself, as he finally pulls into the small town, and parks his car in front of a dilapidated building, that despite being completely and utterly lost, he feels so free. 

A small breeze picks up his hair, and that’s all that bothers him. No classmates around to yell at their friends that’re right next to them, no annoying theatre kids running around in a manic frenzy, no blooming frat boys smoking any sort of carcinogen, no overly excited teachers that just wanted to teach young children rather than monstrous high school students, and best of all, none of the  _ idiots _ asking him the worst possible questions ever.

Changkyun takes a tentative step away from his car, like if he were to step away, his escape would be gone. He goes up to the door and squints to read a handwritten paper on the other side of the darkened windows. He’d go closer if not for the accumulation of dust in the shape of droplets from a fairly recent rainstorm.

And  _ great _ , the building’s business hours say he’s far too early for whatever it is it’s for. He trudged back into his car, and leans his seat back until his entire body’s almost parallel to the ground. 

  
  


He’d probably fallen asleep sometime later because he’s woken up by this young man, probably around his age, knocking on the glass of his window, peering in at him. His first instinct, after being startled awake because quite frankly, it’s kind of creepy, is to start telling the kid off. His next instinct is to just ask the kid what he’s doing through the safety of his car. His third is to start the car and just drive off. 

Changkyun rolls down the window and sits up. 

“Who’re you?” Changkyun asks in a gruff voice only men from exaggerated  _ Wild West _ movies do. Really, if he were in class, he’d stop himself from ever speaking, but it’s probably nine in the morning, and he’s running on those two hours of sleep he’s just gotten. He also doesn’t know this kid, but they seem similar enough. 

“You’re in my spot,” the kid says, pushing up the sleeves of a dark golden sweater and running a hand through black hair. 

Now Changkyun would find this incredibly petty if not for the people he used to go to school with, and honestly, if he parked in the same spot every day, and some kid with a license plate from about state three states over acting like they owned that parking space, he’d be pretty pissed off too. Changkyun’s still wiping the grogginess from his eyes, and he’s exhausted. Whatever he says in response couldn’t be any better than the many options he could’ve responded with. 

The ever-so-clever ‘ _ your name isn’t written on it _ ,’ or the dismissive ‘ _ so what? _ ’ and even the faux confusion of ‘ _ What do you mean, I’ll still be here, and you’ll still be here, just a few feet away from where you usually park. Why should you care?’ _

Changkyun finds in himself what he remembers his brother acts like, who his brother is. He puffs up his shoulders and chest as if he’s a football player, lowers his head, and grimaces to give himself wrinkles he hopes will look intimidating. 

“Well it’s not  _ your _ parking space if I’m in it now. So sod off,” he lowers his voice in a growl, lucky he’s always been a baritone, regardless of age.

The kid on the other side of the car door stifles a fit of giggles, in a way that somehow undermines everything Changkyun’s doing. The other young man looks up at the sky, squinting at the rising sun, “You’re funny. Now come on, can you move your car?”

It irrationally annoys Changkyun with how oddly boisterous the laughter from the dude outside the car is, so he, in his probably two hour of sleep glory (he’s honestly high from exhaustion, but that’s neither here or there), he opens the door to confront the other. Changkyun puts on his angry father impersonation, and stares down the young man before him. 

“I said to move your car, not your body,” the kid says, still giggling. 

Changkyun only has to look a few feet behind the other person to see a beat-up  _ Wrangler _ only the overly white kids drive at school, but significantly older and worse in quality. And he thinks,  _ what a dick, making him move over despite having parked perfectly fine _ , but keeps his composure because this kid would not want to see his torrential, belligerent anger aimed straight for where it hurts, regardless of if he knows the person he’s vituperating. He sucks in a breath, and goes like, “Your car is right fucking there, why should I fucking move if your piece of shit is right there?”

Changkyun’s dressed in all black. Not voluntarily, he only needed to wear dark clothing to flee from his house, and not because he’s one of those kids. Those kids that learnt to swear in third grade and only found the meaning of a few weeks ago, so they use all swears religiously. Those kids that wear all black and think their problems are the most painful, that they’re struggling alone when newsflash, everyone experiences some degree of pain some time in their lifetime. 

The kid backs away, a smile still on his face, and holds his hands up in surrender, “Well, I guess you’re right,” he waltzes around Changkyun and his car, and looks into the building Changkyun cannot name for the life of him, “You’re lost, aren’t you?”

He definitely is, but he also definitely isn’t asking for help from a pretentious douchebag trying to put Changkyun in his place despite having just begun speaking to each other. Changkyun scoffs, and says, “No, I’m just trying to get to,” he needs to quickly think of a populous city worth road-tripping alone to, “Florida—err, Orlando.”

“Don’t you think you’re a bit far north  _ and _ west to be heading so far southeast?”

Changkyun’s a curious person, so he can’t even stop himself when he asks, “Where is this?”

“Well, I’m glad you asked! We’re in Illinois! Of course, obviously not the metropolitan area,” the other man says, a cheery salesman voice far too jubilant for how low the sun still is.

So Changkyun’s not too far from home, which means he should keep driving. He completely bypasses that concern and stretches for a bit, sore from the uncomfortable seats in his car before going over to stand next to the kid. Really, Changkyun doesn’t want to get back on the road, but he cedes defeat, knowing he’ll have to get going eventually, especially if he doesn’t want to be found. 

He’s hoping his parents will notice his absence, but the alarming lack of any form of notification on his phone is enough of an answer to his unaired question.

“Do you want to go eat somewhere?” the kid asks, not noticing Changkyun’s vague feelings of distress pouring out like water in a deadman’s bathtub. 

Changkyun is, admittedly, skeptical at the other person’s offer, barely knowing the kid for more than a few minutes, all of which have been more cumbersome and odd than exciting and friendly. But, he also has nothing to lose, so he shrugs, pops a piece of fruity gum in his mouth, and gives the kid a crooked smile, “Lead the way.”

~~

The kid, as it turns out, is not a kid. He’s a young adult, Kihyun or something, and he’s working in town because he can’t afford to go to college. It’s every sob story Changkyun’s ever heard. Throw in some parental troubles, and Kihyun will be the tragic hero to any vaguely sad book or show or movie. It doesn’t matter, they’re all the same. 

“So, why’re you out here?” Kihyun says once they’ve settled in, quickly changing his timbre from a doting parent to unadulterated sarcasm that just manages to make a Changkyun feel bad about himself, “You can tell me, I won’t tell your mommy.”

“I already said, I’m going down to Orlando,” Changkyun says, his head still held high and his chest still puffed.

“Yeah, and I’m going to the moon, come down from your high chair kid, you’re going to fall,” Kihyun crosses his arms, slouching against the loud, worn leather seats.

Part of Changkyun wants to talk Kihyun’s ears off about all the struggles he’s went through as the disappointment of the household, but he refrains from doing it, and instead, he just says, “Really, I’m driving over to Florida.”

“You’re going down to Orlando alone?” Kihyun asks as if it’s the most outlandish thought in the world, “What’re you going to do, go on all the Disney World rides alone? Romance Mickey Mouse? Have a gay old time with the all the princesses?”

“Yeah,” Changkyun answers tentatively, sipping at the water he ordered off the menu, shifting around because he’s not sure how much he should, or even could, reveal about himself.

The young man wolf-whistles. Not because any beautiful woman walks in, but because what Changkyun’s admitting sounds like complete and utter dog shit. Kihyun isn’t wrong, but Changkyun also decides he isn’t going to tell the truth. Although he awaits a response to the oddly times whistle, Kihyun shrugs, and goes like, “Well,” in a barely audible, but whole-heartedly skeptical voice that somehow manages to get on Changkyun’s nerve each time he says anything that way. 

Changkyun chugs down the rest of his drink and stands up rapidly and unnaturally, and says, “Well, it’s been nice seeing you, but I have to go.”

Although it’s ill-timed and not even region specific, Kihyun stops Changkyun by saying, “Now hang on right there, come on, talk to me. I won’t tell your mommy, remember?”

“Stop saying you won’t tell my  _ mommy _ , that’s gross,” he harps for a moment before actually addressing the request, “Why should I tell you anyway?” Changkyun tries to throw in pleasantries he never had to use in his childhood because no one ever cared enough to force him to say anything of the sort. Hell, even he doesn’t care, but he has to pretend to, even if first impressions don’t matter in this situation. 

The older male raises his hands in defeat, and shakes his head with a smile, “Alright, fine, I won’t make fun of your mother or whatever,” Kihyun crosses his arms with the same smile that Changkyun feels oddly attached to despite hating it, “So, wanna tell me what you’re doing out here in the middle of nowhere at dawn on a school day?”

“Shit, were you waiting for me to move that early?”

“Well, no, but you just confirmed it. Now c’mon, stop stalling.”

Changkyun, being the cunning con-man disguised as a naive high school student that he is, decides to equivocate to as convincing of an answer as possible because he still doesn’t trust Kihyun, “Alright, I’m on the run.”

There’s a moment or two where Changkyun could hear a cartoon sound effect being played over Kihyun’s wordless blinking, “‘Zat it?”

To make up for the missed beat that interrupted the flow of the conversation just before, Changkyun answers a touch too quickly, and a touch too robotically, “Yep.”

“Alright.”

~~

Changkyun’s a bit of a genius, so the moment he puts his car into reverse, it breaks down on him. It’s been a long time coming so he can’t say he was surprised, but right when he tries to leave and go further, it feels like the world’s playing a dirty trick on him. 

He was probably seven when his brother ran into the house one day, beaming in that way preteens who are still obsessed with impressing their parents do, chest puffed in a way Changkyun’s never seen or felt before. Changkyun wasn’t even in the room at the time to hear all of it. All he remembers is “missing children” and how attracted he was to that idea. If Changkyun was actually listening, he probably would've heard his brother say something along the lines of, ”Oh boy, did you know what I’ve heard? People who go missing are on milk cartons!” Yeah, definitely somewhere in the spectrum of over-excited puppy and straddling its border with a keen sense of know-it-all territory, 

Ever since he first heard of it from his brother, he was intrigued by the idea: becoming a missing child. So his plans he’s had for three years, maybe, and his dream of ten years have all culminated into this. And where does it all lead to? Nowhere. Changkyun isn’t a proper missing child. He’s almost eighteen, and he’s lost all his serotonin years ago. On top of that, he’s probably stranded in the ass crack of the Great Plains with nowhere to go.

There’s a knock on his window, and who does he see? Kihyun again. Now, Changkyun doesn’t hate the dude as much as he initially thought, but it doesn’t mean he gets to see Changkyun in such a vulnerable time. 

Changkyun rubs his eyes hard enough to see stars, and the tears that may or may not have accumulated fell away from faux exhaustion, “What?” he asks, probably too annoyed to be healthy. 

“Damn, and I thought we were finally getting to be friends,” god, Changkyun just wants to punch that smirk off the other man’s face and send the dude careening into open traffic where his innards would spill out onto every vehicle in the general vicinity of the accident. He doesn’t do any of that, but stares at Kihyun as if he’s been listening to everything the other man’s been saying, “You weren’t listening to me, were you?”

“Look, I’m sure you’re a great guy, but could you kindly fuck off?”

Kihyun crosses his arms, leaning against Changkyun’s car, just past the mirror. His smile doesn’t falter, and Changkyun would be driving away to knock Kihyun over if not for the whole car situation, “I was just going to offer you a place to stay until your car gets up and running again.”

Changkyun really doesn’t want to decline the offer, or even rush to accept the bait Kihyun’s obviously setting up either. So he brushes it off, “Yeah, well I was just about to go.”

“Kid, kid. I’m sure you were, but I have properly functioning eyes that can look through tinted glass. I know you tried starting up your car, and when it didn’t work, you almost broke down into tears,” either Kihyun thinks he’s so much older than Changkyun, or Kihyun thinks he’s so much better than Changkyun. Either way, Changkyun’s so annoyed, his cheeks flush red as he fumes in silence towards Kihyun. 

“First of all, I ain’t a kid; I can’t be too much younger than you if not older. Second of all, you don’t know what actually happened.”

The laugh that Kihyun releases sends shivers down Changkyun’s spine, in a presumably uncomfortable manner because he hates hearing such joy, and causes Kihyun to detach from his car. When Kihyun straightens again, he’s smiling. Oddly genuinely despite the slight ghost of a smirk lifting a single corner of his mouth, “Alright sure, I won’t call you kid anymore, okay?” After a moment’s hesitation, Kihyun sighs and lets the smile fall, “Plus you look like you’re strugglin’, so I figured I’d come and check on you.”

“Check on me from your ass, fuck off.”

Shaking his head, Kihyun laughs again and runs a hand through his tousled hair, “Here, why don’t we have a chat inside,” he says, extending his hand out to Changkyun, who looks at it in disgust before eventually giving in, and complying with Kihyun’s silent command. 

“I was just like you, y’know?” Kihyun settles behind the counter of the store Changkyun can’t quite tell what it’s meant for and doesn’t care much for it either. In his all-black glory, Changkyun throws himself down on the white chairs that aren’t meant for comfort, but appearance. Kihyun ignores the groan of pain Changkyun releases, and leans against the counter, “All beyond myself and shit.”

“Okay, you don’t know shit about me.”

“Yeah, well I can assume plenty from how you act like a small child rather than the young adult you want to convince me you are,” the way Kihyun doesn’t even bat an eye at Changkyun as he gets to work behind the counter somehow sets the younger man off in a way he doesn’t want to admit.

All his life, Changkyun’s struggled to get on the same level as his brother. He stood like his brother, talked like his brother, acted like his brother, smoked like his brother. The way it made him feel powerful in the face of adversity despite being all the more powerless was tantalizing. So he continued. He’s still a discount version of his brother, and somehow, going out into the middle of nowhere just to hear some random man harp on him for his emotional maturity drives him mad. 

“You’re acting pretty childish too, now aren’t you?” Changkyun sneers as if Kihyun’s spoken a racial slur rather than poking fun at his personality.

Kihyun raises his hands as though he’s been caught robbing a bank or something like that, an idiosyncrasy Changkyun’s noticed whenever Kihyun thinks he may have upset someone, or maybe because it’s out of some evil Changkyun knows Kihyun’s hiding beneath a pointlessly baggy sweater, “I’m sorry for assuming, but there’s no need to throw jabs at me now.”

“Well I’m sorry, Mr. Small-town-boy, I was just assuming shit about you because y’know, that’s just how you fucking act,” Changkyun doesn’t cease, “Don’t make fun of me because my life was fucking shit, and yours is literally nothing.”

Kihyun just laughs, He laughs and he laughs and he laughs. It gets to the point where Changkyun’s actually concerned Kihyun may keel over and die from how hard he laughs. But Kihyun eventually straightens out, his cheeks still red from laughter, a smile still on his face, “I’m sorry your life was shit, but I have to address the elephant in the room. Stuff happens here, just not frequently.”

Changkyun easily shows off his speech training from years of social isolation, and he falters, unable to throw anymore diatribes at Kihyun. He quickly tries to shamble together a comeback, “Well that’s just it, not a lot of shit happens here, so why should I listen to a kid that probably experienced less than my left toe.”

“Here, kid, I can tell a lot has happened to you, but I shouldn’t be the one to hear all this. You should see a therapist.”

“Well I can’t fucking do that now, now can I?” Changkyun alludes to his running away from home, wondering if Kihyun could read his clues that he’s laid out like an idiot. He doesn’t even acknowledge the whole ‘ _ kid _ ’ thing. 

“Go home, I’m sure your parents are worried about you.”

“Well you don’t know that,” Changkyun’s revealing too much, but it’s too late to rescind what he’s said. He frowns, ready to leave. 

Kihyun falters before walking over to Changkyun, crouching down to where Changkyun is, who’s lying lazily on a chair in the lounge, and says, “Look, just go home. You shouldn’t be here, you should be at school, learning or some shit.”

“I can’t, okay?” his exclamation hangs in the air for one, two, seconds before Changkyun shrinks away, finally curling in on himself.

“Why not?” there’s this part of Changkyun that wants to hate Kihyun. He wants to hate the man like all the annoying kids at school. Like all the teachers that don’t understand what he’s going through. Like his parents that just don’t care.

“My brother’s not home.”

It’s a non sequitur that Changkyun can see Kihyun frown at despite his blurring vision. Changkyun doesn’t want to deal with grief all at once. He’s scared. 

“Why isn’t he?” Kihyun asks tentatively, treading eggshells just to try to console Changkyun. 

“I don’t know.”

~~

No one comes running in, demanding for Changkyun is because they know where he is. Nor does he see his parents attempt to contact him through the emptiness of the day. So belatedly, Changkyun decides he’s staying for the time being, at least until he decides if he wants to keep going out of pure necessity or if he secretly wants to stay just for the chance that maybe his parents actually care about him.

He has to brush the conflict away like the dust from his clothes.

Changkyun’s outside Kihyun’s place of work, having been kicked out for a brief closure of the shop for Kihyun to run and get some food. In his boredom, Changkyun kicks around at the plain grey concrete and fiddles around with various items in his pocket, trying to find the small, probably convenience store quality lighter. He flicks around the top and watches a flame form as it dances away with the rhythm of the wind. 

With a shaky hand, Changkyun searches through his pockets to find his pack of cigarettes buried somewhere deep beneath his jacket. He reaches into the box, and plucks out a perfectly cylindrical tube where all his problems just melt away in the flame that lights it. He holds it carefully in front of his face, like his parents might somehow catch him from two states over and lights it. 

“You know you’re not supposed to be smoking out here, right?”

“Yeah, and what sign?” Changkyun asks calmly, his voice raw from either smoke inhalation or the unnecessary lashing out at Kihyun not too long ago. 

“The one right next to you. Plus aren’t you still a minor?”

Dropping the cigarette to the ground, Changkyun stomps on it with his unnecessarily large combat boots, another thing his brother gave to him. His brother manages to overshadow him in many ways, even height and shoe size apparently. Changkyun shrugs, “What about it?”

“Isn’t it kinda, y’know, illegal to smoke if you’re a minor?”

“So what?”

Changkyun lives vicariously through a retro lens despite living in the modern age. Rather than wearing rose-colored glasses where nothing ever reaches the severity it should, he sees through screen tearing and visual distortion with off-kilter colors that make everything look hazy but not dreamlike. 

Stone-cold machine-made distortion is what makes up his life. Well, not his, but his brother’s, who lives in the world of 90’s grunge, the hip-hop scene in the same era, the early 2000’s punk/emo phase, and occasionally 80’s glam rock when he wanted to switch things up. Specifically though, his brother follows the lifestyle of a kid growing up in the 80’s and 80’s despite hardly having been alive for either era. 

But his sense of law falls even further back in time where the fad of recreational drug use began booming. So Changkyun follows it. Smoking is cool, at least it is to his brother, so Changkyun continues. 

“Never mind, get rid of that and come inside.”

The thing about smoking is that it lingers. It lingers a lot. Changkyun’s stinking up the place with his fetid amalgamation of teenage body odor, cigarette smoke, and the gas from when he tried to siphon it into his car the day before he left, doing it under the cover of darkness and in the clothes he’s currently wearing. 

So Changkyun has the gall to feel some semblance of guilt as Kihyun works away behind the counter of whatever business this is. Come to think of it—“What’s this place for?” Changkyun asks, messing with his shirt sleeve. 

“Oh, is it not up front?” Kihyun asks to himself more than anyone else. Changkyun shrugs regardless, to lazy to check it himself, and Kihyun actually answers him, “It’s a studio, sort of. It was originally for photography and some shit like that, but there aren’t many people in the market for that here. We’ve been trying to remodel it lately, y’know, to improve it and whatnot, but not much has happened in that sense either.”

“We?” Changkyun asks, as if he’s surprised Kihyun knows other people with how few people he’s seen so far.

“Oh yeah, my partner. He’s not here right now, obviously, but if you stick around, I’m sure you’ll meet him eventually.”

The way Kihyun says that in that sappy way only those who’re reminiscent of the past do and how it’s mostly directed at his partner, and somewhat dedicated to Changkyun makes him feel oddly fuzzy inside. It’s neither good or bad, but it leaves Changkyun feeling weird, like he might throw up. 

“Really?” that’s all Changkyun can get out before he crosses his arms, seemingly upset at himself for being unable to think of anything to say. 

“Hey, what’s up with these one-worded answers? I thought you liked annoying people?” 

“Oh fuck off.”

“There’s the Changkyun I know and love.”

Changkyun swears to god that he doesn’t blush. He’s a man. He doesn’t blush.

~~

Kihyun actually lets Changkyun stay in his house, regardless of how Changkyun treats him. In all honesty, Changkyun is admittedly surprised. Not because he feels bad for being slightly rude, but because Kihyun actually trusts him so easily. For all Kihyun knows, Changkyun could be a sixty year-old pervert in a seventeen year-old skin suit, or an assassin to kill some random dude out in the middle of nowhere, or even a robber with a really complex plan to rob someone dry from the inside out after gaining the trust of the house owner.

Regardless, Kihyun is an idiot for trusting a stranger that came from nowhere to end up nowhere. He’s an idiot for trusting Changkyun’s reasoning for coming here despite it being true. 

The house is bigger than Changkyun’s own, but appears just as old. There’s water damage lining the ceilings, and there’s a tinge of staleness wherever Changkyun goes. Parts of the paint on the walls are chipping off, breaking the house down one layer at a time until all integrity of living in the middle of nowhere spills onto the cracked pavement that’re minimally filled. There’s an old T.V. that looks old enough to take care of Changkyun and his brother, a scratched up sofa marred not with use but with age alone, and a few spare lights that’re so sickly in color that it almost makes Changkyun feel sick. 

So overall, it’s a step up from Changkyun’s actual house.

There’s this surprising warmth Changkyun doesn’t think he’s ever felt. He also can’t quite place his finger on it. It’s not actually warm in the house, Kihyun said something along the lines of ‘ _ the heater’s broken _ ,’ or whatever, Changkyun didn’t actually bother listening. It’s also not the tint of the walls or the light washing the entire area with a somehow dulled white, like someone managed to paint grey into the white. 

Changkyun’s been in the house for probably two days already, and he feels like he’s home. Not in his actual house, but  _ home _ .

There’s never been a huge distinction between the two words before, they both meant a place for people to live. And somehow, the books they were forced to pick up from the library always preached the same idea of finding a home somewhere outside of a place, and in something sentimental. The line between a house and a home has always been blurred, too thin for Changkyun to even see, and now, it becomes tangible. Like Changkyun’s been given a pair of glasses to make him see what everyone else can, the glasses of muddled reality.

It’s the closest he’s ever gotten to finding a home.

~~

Changkyun meets Minhyuk for the first time when Kihyun decides to offer him a job one day.

So Kihyun says, “Hey Changkyun, I don’t mind you living here, but can you at least get a job or help us to do the least?” and because Changkyun actually doesn’t have a retort to Kihyun, he just shrugs and agrees, albeit reluctantly.

Now, Changkyun left home to find peace and solidarity in the most skindeep method as easily as possible. He’s a teenager, not a priest or a hippie, and he isn’t going to find freedom or salvation on this several year-long journey through each remote crevice of some obscure state that’s unmarred by human interference because he’s just better than people. So his singular desire out of running away is being freed of all the annoying kids in his class that just don’t understand when or how to shut up. 

And somehow, Minhyuk just ruins it for him. 

“Hi! Who are you?” the tall male says awfully loudly for someone who just ran up to Changkyun at break-neck speeds. Even Kihyun, who dragged him into this, doesn’t ease Minhyuk’s verbosity for a second. Changkyun doesn’t even get a chance to respond before Minhyuk’s smile dims with the furrow of his eyebrows, and says, “My name is Minhyuk,” with a revitalized smile.

There’s this saying of ‘ _ stranger danger’ _ or something like that Changkyun’s been told since he was young. Although he never listened to it on account of what his brother showed and told him, he still doubts Minhyuk in the most superficial of ways. 

First of all, no one is allowed to be so loud and so energetic at seven-fifteen in the morning, which by the way is when Kihyun forced him to go to the stupid studio/shop place despite Kihyun leaving for work at at least nine every other day. Secondly, what normal person speaks so quickly and loudly? Thirdly, no one but flamboyant and excessively garish fashion designers should have meticulously styled yet messy hair beneath a beret while simultaneously wearing a scarf and two different jackets on a quite frankly hot autumn day. 

Internal prejudices aside, Changkyun introduces himself with a grossly curt, “Changkyun,” 

“Great, now that you’ve met each other, can you two move that table over there?”

~~

Maybe it’s because he’s never fallen into such a stable yet intimate schedule that he feels so oddly attached to this middle-of-nowhere town that seems no more than five minutes from becoming a ghost town if any number of the few residents Changkyun’s seen decides to up and leave the place without any remorse for the lives they’d built up here. There’s nothing here that Changkyun should like more than his house, and the standards are already so low, but he feels so attached to the place. 

He doesn’t have the fleeting thought that maybe it’s the people he’s with on a day-to-day basis. It can’t be. His brother is better than everyone in this town tenfold, but he somehow feels safer here than he does back at his old home, where his brother is. 

Changkyun doesn’t want to go back.

~~

“Hey, Changkyun,” opening his eyes to Kihyun shaking him awake is not a sight he expected to see this morning, but he doesn’t mind it too much. The older male is smiling softly in the dulcet shades in the white spilling through the curtains and onto his face, “We’re going out to the city today, you wanna come with?”

The car they end up riding in is neither Changkyun’s second-hand car or Kihyun’s old ass Wrangler. It’s a pickup truck. 

They aren’t going for a joyride in the winding backroads through the somehow more remote areas of the state, so none of them can hop into the trunk of the truck unless they want to fly off and hurtle onto the windshields of unsuspecting cars behind them like a pesky bug that manages to explode in an obtrusive goo all over the clear glass. So they load into the truck, visions bleary from the barely risen sun and the restless night before, but they’re all somehow excited. 

“Alright, you wanna finally know why we’re forcing you to the city with us?” Kihyun asks from the passenger seat after they enter the highway in silence. 

Changkyun’s pretty sure he agreed because he has nothing better to do, and it sounded fun, but he shrugs and asks noncommittally, “Why?”

“Wonderful answer,” Kihyun says in a disgustingly upbeat voice that sounds so unlike him, it makes Changkyun physically recoil at the noise of it, “Well, it’s actually because we need to actually run some errands, and then we can do whatever.”

Changkyun shrugs, not too interested in the stipulations to which they need to ‘ _ run errands _ ,’ and looks out the window. It wasn’t too long ago when he, in an adrenaline induced vigor, drove out to the interstate and drove to his heart’s content. He thinks to himself, maybe he could’ve been found if he turned off just a few minutes sooner. Maybe he could find himself and a new place for himself if he drove further. And maybe he should’ve just turned back around. 

He doesn’t want to think about it, especially when the person he’s staying with along with another guy he’s somewhat fond of are right in front of him, excitedly chit-chattering about without a care in the world. 

It leaves a somehow warm feeling within himself.

~~

The errands are getting a new counter after they tore it down not too long ago and a couple of tables and chairs. Why they couldn’t get it back in the other town is beyond Changkyun, but it’s a good enough opportunity to sink a little closer to his roots before he forgets why his roots were so awful in the first place. 

So, as he breathes in the heavy fog of exhaust and a melodious symphony played by the best orchestra of annoyed commuters or tourists playing their car horns to the receiving ears of him and the others he’s with, Changkyun looks around at the cracked and uneven ground of the paid parking lot that he, in all honesty, thinks is way too overpriced. There’s an especially harsh draft from the top of the Willis Tower down onto the commoners who are unworthy of ever viewing the top beyond the glass cage they provide for curious tourists, which also clashes harshly with the river and lake nearby. 

The area feels less like his place of origin than the small ass town he crash landed into (an exaggeration, Changkyun’s great at driving, it just sounds more melodramatic this way), and, considering the city is just between his temporary area of residence and his initial area of residence, it feels fitting that Chicago is the balance of the worst of both worlds, reminding him too much of the places his brother dragged him along to just to escape his world of emptiness. And surprisingly, it’s fitting.

All his life he’s been thrown the short end of the stick and had to chase after it while being affixed to the ground with a chain. So when he cut the chain and managed to finally catch the stick, he fell straight back into the chain while attempting to reach the stick but to no avail. And being in Chicago somehow brings that thought to the forefront, being unable to escape the thought of being trapped again with nowhere to run.

But he has a place to go, especially when Kihyun places a cold but gentle hand on his shoulder making Changkyun shiver, and Kihyun says, “C’mon, we’re taking a bit of a break today.”

Changkyun’s always for the party-now-worry-later kind of guy so he shrugs and goes along with it. It’s a nice change of pace from the countless hours he had to slave away for in the days Kihyun made him go to work with him. 

Yes, the fee for staying over at Kihyun’s house is working at that failing photography or whatever business of two hicks out in the middle of nowhere. And to be honest, the fee isn’t nearly as bad as his fee-less homelife so Changkyun did eventually accept, reluctantly, of course. 

“Where would you like to go?” Kihyun asks, although Changkyun isn’t sure if the former is addressing him or Minhyuk. 

He decides he doesn’t care and answers with an apt, “I don’t know.”

“You’ve gotta have somewhere you want to go in the city.”

Changkyun crosses his arms over his chest, basking in the breath of semi-cool air hitting them in sharp spikes of cold that seems to drop the temperature by ten degrees. He feigns thinking for another few seconds before he answers, “Like where, all the tourist traps?”

“Well, I mean, the  _ bean _ isn’t a tourist trap; it’s free,” Minhyuk helpfully supplies. 

“Oh fuck off. No one likes Millenium Park anyway. So, where would we like to go?” Kihyun begins like the kids Changkyun swears he knew when he was young and followed his brother around everywhere, and he ends sounding like a kindergarten teacher corralling students into a single file line while the awnry kids just run around with no regard for their surroundings. The saccharine voice is so distinctly bitter that Changkyun physically recoils just hearing how intentionally patient the voice sounds despite being beyond annoyed. 

“Alright fine, we won’t go see the Cloud Gate,” Minhyuk says sheepishly, looking to Changkyun for an answer to an alarmingly difficult question. 

“How ‘bout—,” Changkyun has to scrape through the deepest crevices of his brain to remember what they did when him and his entire family went to Chicago as a loving, almost nuclear family,”—the Navy Pier?”

“Great idea!” the way Kihyun then jumps onto Changkyun’s shoulders to push Changkyun forward only for his hands to settle on Changkyun’s arm is weirdly calming despite none of the movements being anywhere near gentle or soft. 

~~

It’s not like Changkyun doesn’t remember what happened in Chicago, it’s just that all he could remember is brightly they smiled into the afternoon sun, out into the lake without a care in the world. And that’s something he wants to savor for as long as he wants. Especially with his portion of a photo booth picture in his wallet for safekeeping, just near enough to him to remind him of what happened despite it being a staged photo of three grown men pretending to be a group of female preteens squealing in octaves only dogs can hear. 

It’s that he feels himself growing too far attached to the two men he’s known for not even a few weeks, and he’s secretly growing apart from his brother as separation draws their similar minds and hearts further away from each other. And that’s all he can think of when he wakes up early in the morning, before Kihyun’s call, like he’s just awoken from a night terror where the image is plastered in his mind like a tattoo, never going away. 

“Changkyun, what’s wrong?” and here’s the problem. His brother would’ve tackled him down onto his bed until he can no longer breathe, and Kihyun’s the opposite. Changkyun could not have attracted himself to a more opposing people, and somehow, he’s scared to get any closer to either. 

Next thing he knows, Kihyun is sitting down on the bed, right next to Changkyun, hands immediately reaching to grasp at soft cheeks. Changkyun might be crying, “Hey, Changkyun? You with me?” Kihyun asks trying to simultaneously get Changkyun to look at him and get the teenager to cease his tears. Neither of which are working. 

“Gosh, did you hate being with us that much?” Kihyun jokes, his voice shaking and his disposition nervous despite the nature of the humor he tries to inject into a tense situation. 

“No,” Changkyun says, scared to face Kihyun.

Kihyun grabs at the sides of Changkyun’s head, so much softer than how his brother does it, and puts their heads together, as if sharing morning breath will solve everything, “C’mon, you gotta have a reason for acting this way.”

“I’m scared,” Changkyun admits. 

“Tell your big brother what’s wrong,” Kihyun’s basically forcing comparisons Changkyun wants to ignore. He wants to pretend nothing’s happened and that he doesn’t feel guilty or wrong for doing what he is. 

“You aren’t my brother,” Changkyun blurts accusingly, instantly tearing himself from Kihyun’s firm but light grip holding them together as if Kihyun’s burned him. 

And Changkyun can feel the icy cold burn Kihyun’s gaze on him leaves, unable to tell if the gaze ever leaves him or not. It takes a while to hear a response, even as Changkyun’s eyes are squeezed close as if the comparison between his brother and Kihyun haven’t been burned into his brain like trauma, and time seems to pass in an instant, like he’s about to fall into a period of idleness that’s hardly restful enough to be considered sleep. Either way, after the one, two, three… twenty seconds of waiting that feels closer to a minute than half of one, Kihyun responds, “Well I’m sorry I can’t be who you want me to be.”

Changkyun wants to rush to correct Kihyun. Tell him that the comparison isn’t an expectation. That no one can actually be  _ just like _ his brother. But he can’t, this fear of loss and acceptance for the future and the dwindling present is a suckerpunch to his distant past where all he ends up is some point of stasis where he’s just afraid to find out when he is. 

“Changkyun, kid, I think it’s really time for you to go home if you miss your brother so much,” Changkyun doesn’t even acknowledge the kid part that’s returned again.

But he doesn’t want to. He can’t go home when all he remembers of it are empty eyes and the cracked walls paired with mold and cobwebs. And he can still hear the deafening silence and the harsh screaming between the traffic outside. 

“I can’t,” Changkyun says, unable to elaborate. 

“Why not?”

“I don’t have a home.”

He can’t go to a place that doesn’t exist. 

~~

“Changkyun, come here,” Kihyun acts like a stern teacher ready to admonish a misbehaving student with a stern talking to, as if that’ll solve years of negligence and self-loathing, “Why don’t you want to go home?”

And there he goes, Changkyun flushes, unable to handle the sudden proximity to the older male and the suddenness of the personal question he’s never faced head on before. 

“I don’t have one, that’s why.”

Kihyun looks away from Changkyun, looking back towards the teenager with this heavy weight of exhaustion that Changkyun almost collapses at the sight. But he doesn’t and Kihyun continues, “Well why don’t you have a home?”

“Because my parents are pieces of shit, alright?”

Maybe this is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. A surprisingly intimate moment at seven in the evening, almost eight, where they’re in Kihyun’s house after a long day’s work at the studio, and they’re in their pyjamas as they lounge around the house doing whatever they choose. Kihyun is reading a beat-up novel of which the title is not visible and Changkyun is staring blankly at the television as if the news is the most interesting thing in the world. And it feels like family. They’ve recently bid Minhyuk farewell, having eaten dinner together not too long ago, the comfort food settling in their stomachs as they relax together in near silence, any ire from previous discussions or arguments all but extinguished by the overwhelming calm. 

And this sudden question aiming to hit Changkyun where he’s weak and where he’s unprepared is a knife wound where leaving the blade in is answering it as equivocally as possible and taking it out is revealing every single detail he’s terrified of. And despite there being a technically right answer, the exposure to bacteria leads to a sense of apathy where Changkyun doesn’t want to do either and just cede defeat to release. 

But through his stupor, he takes the knife out, and spills. 

“And they’ve never done anything to make me feel at home in my own house. They never bought me my own bed, my own posters, my own clothes. They never filled in any of the holes or cracks in the walls. They never fixed the draft from my window. They never showed me affection. They never cooked me homemade meals. They never told me they even liked me for me.”

Changkyun is emotionally raw, cradling the figurative knife as he bleeds his emotions onto the lumpy couch, unable to process them properly as he reveals himself. He feels numb more than anything.

“And I guess my brother was—and he still is—the only good thing about my house,” and when Kihyn doesn’t respond, Changkyun frowns, “I’m sorry, that was stupid.”

Something that Changkyun realizes is that Kihyun doesn’t frown often, and in his attempt to focus on everything but his feelings toward his parents and his old house, it’s all he notices. All Changkyun wants to do if smudge off the unreadable expression in reaction to his monologue until he doesn’t have to face the fact that he revealed something he’s never revealed before. No less with someone he’s met no longer than a few weeks ago. 

“No, Changkyun, I’m sorry I forced you to tell me about your home life.”

“You didn’t force me,” Changkyun says with more conviction than he thinks he’s ever done before. 

~~

Somehow, nothing changes between the two of them, although Changkyun will always feel odd at the remembrance of having told Kihyun about his so-called  _ tragic backstory _ . Changkyun’s still working with Kihyun and Minhyuk and he’s still staying with Kihyun. 

“I’ve never gotten to ask you before, but why are you guys remodeling your studio anyway?” Changkyun says one day as he’s assembling a desk, Kihyun’s organizing their supplies, and Minhyuk’s adding some drawings on the newly painted walls. 

“We’re trying to expand our business,” Minhyuk answers, not looking up once from the wall. 

Kihyun actually looks up, his eyebrows still furrowed from his focus on the various objects Changkyun doesn’t recognize too much at first glance, “There isn’t too much of a demographic in the market for professional art or photos over here and there’s no reason to give commissions from a studio, so we wanted to expand it to any kids in the area who want to learn any kind of art ‘cause we don’t have much for children in the area.”

“Really,” Changkyun responds, looking straight over to Kihyun, “That’s actually really nice.”

Kihyun sets his things down, looking over to Minhyuk for a second, and says, “Wow, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Shit, really?” okay, so maybe because he’s never experienced too much love, he’s not the most sociable of people, but he frowns, trying to remember what he’s said to Kihyun, “I never noticed.”

“Nah, that doesn’t matter. Thanks anyway.”

Minhyuk laughs from where he is all the way on the other side of the building, “God, Kihyun, did being with one new person deflate your communication skills that much?”

“Oh shut up,” Kihyun says with a smile, shaking his head, “We’re almost done, so get back to work.”

Changkyun lets out a snort, entertained despite his disdain for the seemingly menial conversations his classmates tend to have between periods. 

~~

Changkyun’s been living in a peaceful small town out in the middle of nowhere and he expects the typical wakeup call of Kihyun padding through the house and the slow boiling of a kettle on the stovetop, so when he hears heavy pounding on the door and some speech he can’t make out through the layers separating him from the front door, it awakens him immediately. 

He opens the door without even checking around for Kihyun. 

“Is Daniel Im here?” that’s a name Changkyun hasn’t heard in a while. None of the students or teachers who were unable to pronounce his actual name have been here to call him by his English name, so he immediately feels on edge, as if the ruckus didn’t cause it already. 

“That’s me. What’s going on?”

“Your parents filed a missing child report. We’re bringing you back home.”

Changkyun mentally cringes at everything the man says, but he’s more curious than anything, so he asks, “How did you find me?”

“We tracked your license plate number,” the man, an officer Changkyun infers, says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. In all fairness, he was sloppy in his attempts to leave the house. He left his phone on and drove in his car despite knowing there are cameras at intersections. 

“It’s impressive they even kept my name on the car,” he mumbles to himself before he directs his attention to the officer, “Well tell them I’m not going back.”

“You have to go home. Your parents miss you.”

Now, Changkyun isn’t ready to release his almost twenty years of mental anguish onto this poor unsuspecting man who just wants to get his job done, so he takes a deep breath, “This is my home now. I’m not going anywhere.”

Changkyun peers back when he hears Kihyun walk downstairs and into the front of the house, embracing Changkyun in a sleepy stupor, “Changkyun, what’s going on?”

“Go back to sleep, I can take care of this on my own,” Changkyun says quietly in the direction of Kihyun’s ear, wary of the presence of the officer

That sobers Kihyun immediately, although he still pays no mind to anyone but Changkyun who’s a pillar of warmth at the moment, “Now that’s not the Changkyun I know and love. What’s going on?”

“Not to alarm you,” Changkyun eyeing over at the man who’s observing the situation carefully, “but there’s this… man at the door.”

“Ah, shit,” Kihyun straightens into a stance Changkyun doesn’t think he’s ever seen in the man before, although he says a quick, ‘you could’ve just told me before I made a fool of myself,” to Changkyun before directing his attention onto the officer, looking far too strong and independent for a fairly short male with a bedhead and oversized t-shirt and loose pants combo, and looks at the officer, “What seems to be the problem, officer?”

“You’re holding a missing child here.”

Missing child again. All Changkyun can remember is his brother, the excitement at learning something new, the curiosity of an unexplored topic, and the further exploration of the face. 

Maybe Changkyun’s brother forgot immediately after telling him and their parents. Maybe no one even cares about the concept. Maybe the fascination with it was a waste of time. 

But he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything but his own experiences that went into his eventual escape from his hellscape at his parents’ house. And even though he knows he shouldn’t be out here in the middle of nowhere without any supervision from his family, he can’t help but to loathe the idea of returning. 

“I’m not a missing child,” Changkyun says, directly contradicting his past obsession with the concept. He technically is a missing child, but he doesn’t feel so. Instead of being lost in the wilderness or stuck with someone that kidnapped him, Changkyun feels free more than anything. He clarifies, “I’m old enough to run away with impunity and I drove my car out myself.”

“I’m sorry Daniel, but you have to go home. It’s out of my jurisdiction to let you stay here and your friend can get in trouble for having you stay here.”

Changkyun looks over to Kihyun, who offers a weary smile because the implications on consequences have been spelled out directly to them, and there’s nothing more they can do than cooperate. The teenager sighs, “Fine, I’ll go.”

“Alright, gather your things and come out to the car.”

Changkyun doesn’t even have to try to escape or hide away, knowing it’ll only harm Kihyun further. Parts of him want to just take off through the neighbors’ unfenced backyards and keep himself away from everything he’s been trying to avoid, but he has to remember that he isn’t the only player in this game and if he cheats, he has the most to lose and his partner won’t be any better off. And another part of him wants to believe that the officer trusts in him, to be a good person, rather than forgetting to tell them the consequences of playing dirty altogether. 

“I don’t want you to go,” Kihyun admits, unable to act on the situation. 

“I have to,” there’s no argument, no retortion because they have no other choice, but Changkyun’s still emotional over it, “You won’t get in any trouble this way.”

There really is nothing either of them can do so Kihyun gestures for a quick embrace and looks directly into Changkyun’s misty eyes with his own and he says, “Hey, you have my number. You know where I am. I’ll still be here for years to come, just come over when you can. And I promise I won’t forget you if you don’t.”

“I’ll come visit later.”

“C’mon, just think of it as an extended vacation.”

~~

It isn’t until Changkyun’s loading his bag of minimal items, now stuffed with various articles of clothing and other items of the such, that he realizes he’s actually leaving. He’s losing his home.

“Kihyun,” he yells at the departing young man, “I’ll be home soon.”

Said male doesn’t turn around in acknowledgement, but the text Changkyun gets after the officer begins driving is enough of an answer. 

_ “I’ll be waiting.” _

~~

Home isn’t a specific place. It isn’t a cozy corner in a cold room, or a soft bed after a long day. Home is the environment around a person. It’s a person, maybe a feeling. Home is curling up with a loved one in the coldest of rooms, warming themselves up in the absence of all such feelings, or the comfort of returning home drained only to be revitalized by the mere sight of another. 

Changkyun’s brother was home. The older male was that feeling of comfort in the absence of all love despite questionable actions. Home doesn’t have to be a good influence, at his first home was admittedly a terrible one, but what home is is that feeling of enrapture, to never want to let go. 

But then Kihyun came along. And it felt like Changkyun never knew what home was. All his life, Changkyun was led to believe home was this empty prison-like impersonal berth where he’s only allowed to rest. Home was rough, harsh, like coarse-grit sandpaper giving him the pretense of future betterment while eating away at him. Home was, to a degree, deceitful. And then Kihyun showed him home is placid in nature, but stern when necessary. Home is caring when no one else seems to care. 

And that’s what home becomes to him. One person, maybe two, manages to shift an entire perspective from limited at best to clear as day. 

Home is love. 

~~

Changkyun doesn’t stop resenting his classmates for their fake personalities and painted on looks of concern when he finally returns. And he doesn’t automatically love his parents, and his parents don’t suddenly shower him with attention just because of the stunt he pulled. 

He runs a hand through his newly shaved hair, not quite used to the draft on the back of his head or the absence of the tacky yellow-ish brown. There wasn’t a reason for it besides losing what teenage rebellion he wanted to enact onto his peers and superiors who don’t care at all about what the hell he’s doing. Directly contradictory to that, Changkyun took it upon himself to pierce his eyebrow and later do a stick and poke on his arm. 

So Changkyun doesn’t think he changed much at all, but the feeling is there. The sensation that something’s off. That something in him shifted, but he doesn’t know where so he just brushes it off and pretends he’s the same person he was almost a month ago. 

~~

“I’m proud of you, Daniel,” said male doesn’t know what’s worse. The patronizingly slow tone or his counselor’s insincere monotone in the way the man says Changkyun’s English name. Either way, he’s forced to sit through his superior speak, “After what happened in the fall, I’ve been told you haven’t been acting up as much, and you’re actually interacting with your peers more. You’ve just been more sociable, so I’m proud of how much you’ve grown, and I think you should too.”

Now he doesn’t know where his counselor got that idea, but he knows it can’t be any further from the truth. But he nods, silently agreeing with what his counselor says just so he can leave. Changkyun’s almost to graduation, and here him and his counselor are, having an idle conversation about how different he is even though he knows it’s wrong. 

“If I may ask, what sparked this change?”

Changkyun shrugs, he doesn’t have a response for the reasoning behind a non-existent development of character. He doesn’t respond.

~~

“Bro, I’m gonna miss you,” Changkyun says with his suitcase of his things, his car that was shipped (he doesn’t know how it came back, but he doesn’t bother questioning it either) all the way back to Pennsylvania from Illinois at his side. He doesn’t even need to hear a response, “I loved it here with you, but I gotta leave. I gotta get home.”

Changkyun shifts his weight, “I feel like I have you to thank for that. For telling seven year-old me about missing children. It honestly inspired everything I did, and then, it led me far away just to find home. Being a missing child wasn’t scary at all. It saved my life. And I’m so thankful for you. I love you.”

His brother doesn’t initiate it, Changkyun does. He reaches over to hug the cold and receive the warmth he won’t experience for practically forever. On his way out, Changkyun contemplates before he leans out the window on his side of the car and shouts to the older man, “I bet you’d love Kihyun. I know I do.”

In the darkness of night, Changkyun goes from the graveyard all the way back down the path he hasn’t driven on in years, speeding up the sunrise as he travels between time zones. He’s losing time as he pushes his time further into the future, but he knows he’ll be where he belongs.

Changkyun is going home.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> the part when the random officer dude tries to take changkyun home is based around this article legal wise: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://oureverydaylife.com/child-runaway-laws-5418580.html&sa=D&ust=1577514955252000&usg=AFQjCNE6ohDfTZFHZSOgAzi0UgNLkENAKw 
> 
> this is the first fan fiction i'm writing after having taken a whole semester worth of ap english. instead of using what we learned in class, i decided to write a story about this grossly flawed character running away not because he wants to, but because the idea was planted into his head and he just wants to be petty. the most influence from english class in this fan fiction is how changkyun's one of those flawed protagonists like holden caulfield in the catcher in the rye and a bunch of extended and unnecessary metaphors. (aka, my english teacher would be so disappointed if they found this)
> 
> this is also based on that one walk the moon song because it fit (not completely, but not many songs are about a petty self-destructive kid running away from home out of spite) and i was listening to it when i decided i wanted to write about this. (also, i totally recommend other walk the moon songs, even if their last album wasn't the greatest, especially tiger teeth if you're into vibing)
> 
> also also, ignore the gross amount of detail when describing chicago, i didn't know i was so passionate about it when i wrote this. (and my penchant for using the word gross and its various synonyms and the word shit so often, i suppose.)


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